We'll Have to Muddle Through Somehow
by McChanged
Summary: Alex lies on the kitchen floor for Shiva because Izzie leaving him feels a lot like her dying; he doesn't really know the rules.
1. Chapter 1

Title: We'll Have to Muddle Through Somehow

Note: Wow I've missed my Grey's fics and I know I should be updating those but you know… I have no idea how. So this is the first part of a series but I really just wanted to get this out there and see what you guys think. And yes I'm aware the titles from a Christmas song, so sue me... wait don't.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

* * *

Alex lies on the kitchen floor for Shiva because Izzie leaving him feels a lot like her dying; and he doesn't really know the rules.

* * *

The day after she leaves him a note in his cubby, another appears with a key and an invisible invitation. He packs up all the stuff in the trailer and drives back to the first place he really called home in Seattle.

Moving back into Meredith's should be weird, because most of his married time with Izzie was spent there. (Except it wasn't, because she was dying and he only left the hospital to hold off exhaustion or eat something besides crappy hospital food.)

Meredith's busy re-growing an organ so she sends Cristina to get him out of his proverbial prom dress but she sort of just sits next to him and talks through medical procedures. (She's never been that great at dealing with tragedies and he's glad she's at least not buying crap from the dollar store this time.)

Derek, who's the only one actually staying at the house, seems to split his time between pretending there's not a thirty-something year old laying on his kitchen floor and sitting silently at the kitchen table like he's waiting for Alex to snap and pull an Ava with the chef knife in the dishwasher. It's annoying, but sometimes before he leaves for work he'll drop a cereal box and a bowl with a spoon next to Alex's head with the command that he eat before he gets back. (It's nice to be taken care of for a change.)

Hunt stops by and really just resumes suicide watch, but it's the thought that counts. (Because this guys been to war, and he choked his girlfriend, and he's got his own issues to deal with.)

(Lexie comes and leaves way too much macaroni and cheese.)

* * *

He's not really all that pissed at her until he is. (And then he just continually see's red, because _he_ feed her a freaking banana. And _he _brought her meds to her, and _he_ saved her life and she doesn't get to just walk out of his.)

The thing is, this isn't the first time she's left him because Denny and LVADS and DNR forms and she _promised._ She stood at the base of his bed and said _I love you_ and _promised._ He didn't sign up for cancer and chemo and bananas in O.R scrub rooms but he did it because it's _Izzie_. And dammit she _doesn't get to walk out on this. _

On day three, he gets up and showers and then finds a missing recipe card next to the bread box on the counter he once spent an entire Saturday helping her look for.

(He's back on the kitchen floor within ten minutes because it hurts again, to the point of not being able to see, and he doesn't know the rules.)


	2. Chapter 2

_Too short and sort of has an Alex/Reed-ish tint to it because apparently I've fallen in love with them. Dear Lord like I need another ship. I wanted it updated though because I'm in the writing mood and those seem to come less and less these days._

_Disclaimer: Don't own._

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Alex Karev thinks he might be a sucker for punishment. A full-blown masochist in the making. It's rather depressing.

He finally gets off the floor and everybody seems to give a breath of relief before they start noticing that the alcohol bottles on top of the fridge are disappearing too fast. Then he's found on the floor for an entire different reason.

He knows he's worrying people but he really can't find the energy to keep breathing let alone care what the other people in this house think. Meredith's home but she gets it, knows loss, and leaves him be, stopping just long enough to make sure he's not dead when she walks past his room on the way downstairs.

He spends his days at the hospital and spends two incredibly embarrassing days bearing his soul to Reed, one that has him sans shirt and he really doesn't know how the _hell_ this happened. He's never drunk at work but the chief is so things go on normally for awhile.

Then everything goes to hell and he wonders _why_, just when he's getting comfortable, things fall apart.

He needs stitches on his palm because evidently all his deep thinking is done when he gets drunk and the glass in his hand was just willing to be smashed into tiny little pieces.

Reed is his doctor in the ER because, as he's said before, he's a masochistic and spending an hour sitting while she watches him with eyes that seem to just _know_ is _fun_ for him.

She doesn't even bother to call him out on the fact that unless his knives at home are made of glass it's pretty impossible for his injury to be from washing dishes. She does however give a back-handed comment about where he found his scotch flavored toothpaste and he considers leaving. He doesn't though because even as it's leaving her mouth, her hand is tightening on his wrist and he knows she doesn't really mean it.

He gets halfway to the door, stops and instead spends the next twenty minutes throwing up his stomach's contents in the bathroom. Sometime between when he stops _actually_ throwing up and starts dry heaving she comes in with a bottle of water. He mumbles a 'thanks' because he's not a total douche.

"Did it all the time with my dad," she responds and it's Lexie all over again. He considers starting a drunk-dads club, and the thought makes him think of O'Malley which brings him back to Izzie and he's back to throwing up.

She sighs and drops to the floor. It's going to be a long night.

She drives him home because she was on her way home when he came in and she has to be back at the hospital in 8 hours. He thinks this is where anybody else would make a speech. Some long-winded _thing _that should make him change his actions but would probably only succeed in giving him a headache.

She doesn't though, just drives and hums under her breath and tune that he doesn't recognize. But when he gets out and starts to stumble to the front door she rolls down the window and calls his name.

"You can't keep doing this. It isn't fair," and he doesn't know if she's talking about herself or about him. He figures both because he does all his deep thinking when he's drunk.

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_Review and let me know that I haven't completely lost my touch please._


	3. Chapter 3

It's been forever and I am extremely sorry, but schools been killing me and so has work. Saturdays are my days to write and honestly I've been staring at a blank document for way too long. Review, and hopefully I'll be able to update soon. Oh and Izzie will be back next chapter.

Disclaimer: Don't own.

* * *

When Alex Karev's eight, his dad hits his mom for the first time, and really he's been damned from the start.

It's back-handed and hard enough to split the skin on her cheek bone, and to tell the truth, none of that scares him more than the look on his mom's face.

(Daddy hitting mommy becomes a common after dinner activity, and isn't that just the worst thing you've ever heard.)

When he's ten, his dad whips around halfway through squeezing his mom's windpipe closed, and before Alex can even blink he's being pulled forward, towards the crumpled form of his mom on the floor. Later he'll remember the words his dad said, but at the moment all he could hear was the blood rushing past his ears.

He joins wrestling, because he likes when things come full circle, and being able to kick his dad's ass should be just that.

(It's not. His dad leaves, and his mom drinks, and he doesn't know what it means that he misses _family dinner_.)

He loses his virginity when he's seventeen. He doesn't even remember her name. He doesn't remember any of their names.

(But his first kiss, he remembers her.)

---

There's no sign, no big flashing sign that says here's where tragedy really begins. (And sometimes, like right now, he wishes there had been.)

He's not even close to buzzed when he meets Izzie Stevens. He's on his second beer, but he starts work tomorrow, so it'll be his last one. (Who knew he could be good at self-restraint.)

She's beautiful, all blond and giggly and he keeps one eye on her as she makes her way through the crowd.

Later, he goes home alone, and tells himself it's because she's too blond and too giggly, and he'd always preferred red-heads. He's a good liar, so it's not until he kisses her on a bar stool at Joe's does he admit the real reason he didn't bring her home.

Izzie Stevens will always be his exception. Through cancer, and weddings, and scrub nurses in on-call rooms or married friends in bedrooms, and god help him if he didn't think this might be _forever_.

---

There's a memory. One imprinted on his mind that he can't seem to forget. It burns his eyelids when he's trying to sleep, and makes his chest hurt.

He's six and not a child of a broken home yet. His dad comes home early from a shift, and instead of crashing on the couch or going out for a beer with his buddies; he peeks his head into Alex's room and asks him if he wants to go for ice cream.

When they're settled at a table, his dad turns to him and says: "How was your day?"

And that's it. The end of a memory he had the privilege of experiencing, of keeping. He refuses to admit that he misses _that _dad more than anything.

---

Meredith has a fucking post-it.

And she's all whole and healed now so when he walks through the door with stitches on his hand and scotch on his breath she sighs and tells him to sit down. He find it kind of ironic that he's getting the don't _worry Izzie will come back and that's why you need to stop self-destructing_ speech from the same girl why broke a guy's penis, but whatever.

"I know how you feel Alex, but just give her some time. She loves you and you love her, and eventually she'll come back. But she can't come back to you like this."

Still, he leaves the bottles on the fridge alone and the next morning goes for a run. And he tries to forget what he really wanted to say to Meredith last night. The same thing his dad said to his mom that night too many years ago.

"_Pathetic huh?"_

(Two weeks later Izzie walks through the door, and the same thought plays on repeat in his head.)


End file.
